Exacting ethics
Saturday March 20, 2010
Thoughts are strange things. They swim into your head, and sometimes they take up residence; but even once they have done so, it can be a time before you realise that they are there, or before you work out quite what kinds of thoughts they are or how they can be expressed.
I spent today at a one day festival of literature for small press publishers here in Leicester. It was a wonderful event, chatting to publishers and writers, hanging out with friends, attending readings, and giving a reading from my novel in the afternoon. Nevertheless, coming at the end of what has been a really busy few months, this evening when I arrived home, I slumped down in a beanbag by the radiator, incapable of doing anything much. Sensing that he was in the presence of kindred spirit, Bodhicattva the thinkBuddha cat came and hopped onto the beanbag next to me and fell asleep. And there we sat, doing nothing, me letting those thoughts swim to and fro, and Bodhicattva snoring ever so slightly, and letting out the occasional sigh of pleasure.
It was after sitting here like this for some time that the following thought surfaced, and once it surfaced I realised that it has been knocking around for some time, in one fashion or another. I’m not sure, just at the moment, if it is a thought worth pursuing. I’m tired out, and incapable of thinking very much. Perhaps tomorrow I will decide that this is a thought to be scrapped, and will find myself wondering why I found it so compelling the day before. At the moment, however, the thought seems worth noting down.
It is this: that many of the ways in which we talk and think about ethics are simply too exacting. As if we can never do enough. As if we will always fall short. As if ethics is a business of constant struggle, without any end in sight. I may just be tired. But at the moment, I really can’t be doing with all that constant demand. There is something in all that dissatisfaction with the way that we are, ordinary human beings going about our lives, trying to do as best we can, that seems distasteful. Just now, as I sit here (Bodhicattva letting out another sigh), I wonder: is there something monstrous, something inhuman in the kinds of demands that the ethicists put upon us?And, in the height of the demands they place upon us, are our ways of talking and thinking about ethics always rooted in a sense of lack, a sense of all that is not right, and therefore at risk of failing to see the extent of sheer, ordinary goodness there is in the world? But then, as I say, I may just be tired…
#2 · mike
21 March 2010
I’ve recently been pondering along the same lines Will. It’s as if we humans need to construct some kind of model person to act as a template for our lives, an ideal towards which we should all strive to conform and against which we can all be measured – and, of course, beside which we all fall short. The ideal varies somewhat according to time, place and belief but the tyranny is always the same. Religions are especially poisonous in this respect with their idea that we are born sinful or deluded or in some way in need of correction before we can be considered acceptable. Heaven forbid that we should dare to slack for a moment in the hopeless task of trying to emulate our glossy fantasy of Buddha or Christ or whomever we revere as embodying our model of perection. Hell awaits the unclean and we should ‘practice as if our hair is on fire’ (to use a particularly bizarre Zen expression) to save ourselves from our infinite faults. It’s almost as if we need to apologise to the universe for being born the way we are. There’s something quite pathological about this demand to be ‘better’ all the time, to accomplish a perfect set of ethical skills, or unexcelled wisdom and enlightenment, or whatever we think it is that we lack and really ought to have before we can just be an OK member of planet earth. Why do we do this to ourselves?
#3 · Elee
21 March 2010
A further problem with exacting ethics is their lack of subtlety. As with many (if not most) people, I would like to think that my personal, overarching ethical standpoint is to minimise the harm I cause in the world. But the rule of minimising harm does not provide me with a list of ways to behave – this takes my knowledge of the world and the people in it. Each situation must be judged for itself.
For example some people I can be blunt with, others need more gentleness. Some people appreciate bluntness some of the time, but need gentleness at other times. Were these decisions to be made according to a rule book, they would take massive amounts of time to figure out – and would appear clumsy and forced. But (in general) they are made quickly and easily, as part of our functioning as ethical beings.
There will always be certain ethical problems that arise in our day-to-day functioning that need some time to work out, but I suspect that these are in the minority, and that many pass by with us barely noticing them, because we deal with them so naturally.
#4 · Dave Robinson
22 March 2010
Two thoughts on this; first it is our inner critic which has us telling ourselves we should do this or that AND know the answer. This comes from a place of lack, of feeling not ok about who / what we are. Second, go back to the Golden rule – do to others as you would have done to you. Accept that we do not have access to the whole picture and act in accordance with the Golden rule without being attached to being right or wrong.
#5 · Robert Ellis
23 March 2010
I don’t accept that exacting ethics really are ethics, because they merely set up an ideal that we fall short of, as you say, and the effect of constantly falling short of an ideal is alienation, hypocrisy, habituation to failure and ultimately conventionalism. Justifiable ethics must be those that address conditions, which means that they have to be at the working edge of what we can actually do, given all conditions. “Ought implies can” is correct only when “can” takes into account every condition, not just obvious physical and social conditions but also psychological and spiritual conditions.
Your “exacting ethics” would be what I call eternalist ethics, but I would contend that those who think that ethics are necessarily eternalist have missed the point of what ethics can offer. To work, ethics must offer some release from the counter-dependent relationship between “exacting ethics” on the one hand, and the rejection of ethics and associated slide into conventionalism on the other.
#6 · Elee
23 March 2010
Robert, I’m interested in your comment for a couple of reasons. Firstly I think I probably agree with you, but I’m interested to know where you feel “Justifiable ethics” reside, given that you don’t appear to be a fan of “externalist ethics”. Are we naturally ethical beings? To what extent to we absorb ethical frameworks from those around us? And to what extent are we required to think deeply or not at all about ethics to be able to be as ethical as we can be?
Secondly, I’m not sure why you include “spiritual” in your list. It seems to me that what people call “spiritual” can generally be accounted for either by “social” – i.e. shared meaning-making – or “psychological” – i.e. our own, personal, responses, thoughts, feelings etc. I think ethics starts getting worrying when the “spiritual” creeps in, because it starts to suggest that people who aren’t spiritual are less ethical. It is also a way for religious dogma to creep into the ethics, which does appear to be a way for people to be led into making decisions that I would argue were profoundly unethical, for example deciding that only people of their own religion are truly deserving of ethical responses, and that other people can be treated less ethically.
#8 · Jenny Roberts
24 March 2010
I had similar thoughts after a retreat last weekend. Thing was, though I felt calm and enriched I was also mentally exhausted and just for a while I wondered if all the effort with trying to live a skilful life was really worth it – or if I was indeed capable of it.
The next day I felt my usual robust self. Living skilfully is an effort after all and sometimes I guess it feels like we might not be up to it. But when the energy returns it feels (to me anyway) well worth that effort.
Interested to know how you felt the next day.
#9 · Aliman
27 March 2010
I don’t savor a fixed continuum along which every single person must traverse in the same way, but maybe there is at least a dialectic which needs to be traversed to reach synthesis: maybe we must struggle with the ethical sense for a time, run the gauntlet, so we may come out the other side with the ability to simply act in the moment, spontaneously, in an ethically correct way? Maybe ethics is “too exacting” but it must be that way for now, until we are able to let it go and act in harmony with what is now.
Aloha!
#10 · Robert Ellis
29 March 2010
To respond to Elee’s questions. We are certainly not ‘naturally’ ethical or indeed ‘naturally’ anything, but there are conditions in our background, whether biological, cultural, or psychological that we need to be able to address. Those around us affect us for good or ill, but ethics is about what we do with those conditions and how we respond to them. The justifiable balance, I would argue, lies in maximally both addressing those conditions and stretching them towards rationally formed ideals. Ethics does not just consist in dogmatically following an ideal that does not address conditions, but nor does it consist in merely following what conditions dictate to us. For more details see my website www.moralobjectivity….
Elee’s objection to ‘spiritual’ is probably a terminological issue, depending on the context in which you have been used to hearing that word used. For me it does not have any dogmatic overtones. The term does not necessarily imply supernaturalism for me, nor is it necessarily linked to religion. Nor would I make a strong distinction between ‘spiritual’ and ‘psychological’. Nevertheless I find ‘spiritual’ a useful term for that which most deeply motivates us.
#11 · Kate
9 April 2010
I must say that I am not an expert on either Buddhism or ethics, but your blog resonated with me.
It can sometimes feel like a struggle to know how best to act in the world so that you are having only a positive effect, because it’s difficult to know objectively what sort of effect you are having.
My take on it is that you can only start from the knowledge you have right now. So speak your truth and act your truth as best you know it at any one time, and be non-attached to the results of speaking or acting that truth.
Where you see that another’s behaviour is going to have negative results in your eyes, tell them so and what you see as the likely results. Then be non-attached to their reaction.
Listen to others’ comments on your behaviour in a non-attached way, see past any emotive words they use to discern whether you need to change your approach to life.
Use meditation and contemplation to expand your truth.
Study ethics or whatever other subjects feel right to you but balance this with play and relaxation as it is when you stop struggling with all you have learned that it integrates into your consciousness and the insights start to come.
As for the ‘living up to a perfect image’ thing – this is an insidious lie that we should never be fooled by. Yes expanding your self in many different ways is key to true fulfilment and happiness, but the joy is in those small achievements each day where you are adding to all that you already are, not in attempting to reach an end goal, for where would you go then? It’s a never-ending journey of discovery.
#12 · Chris
11 April 2010
My post is a collage of questions and responses to other posts made here. I am currently writing an essay, the aim of which is to critically assess an ethical theory by first defining the desirable features of an ethical theory, describing a particular ethical theory and then assessing whether that theory lives up to the aforementioned desirable features. I have chosen Virtue Ethics and more specifically the ethics of care. My main sources are Slote and Hursthouse. So enough explaining why I am so interested in this post and your ideas and onto it!
I am still working through the relationship between ‘exacting’ and ‘demanding’ in assessing an ethical theory. Is an exacting ethics necessarily demanding and is a demanding ethics necessarily exacting?
Mike describes the need/desire to be ‘better’ as pathological but I can’t see how treading water (so to speak) in your life would be very satisfying in the long run. In referring to model persons he seems to be narrowing his focus on agent-based ethical theories rather than action-based ones and I think the former are less demanding than the latter. I think your ‘ideal’ model person is a projection of your own ideas of ideal, so maybe it isn’t the ethical theory that is demanding but you yourself.
I agree with Elle about the lack of subtlety if in fact she is referring to rule-based ethics. In judging each situation for itself what knowledge, experience or theory would you draw on to make that judgement?
Aliman’s idea of running the gauntlet to come out the other side with the intuitive ability to deal with ethical dilemmas based on a core of principles appeals to me. I am working through the relationship between intuition and principles. Jeff McMahan’s ‘Moral Intuition’ in the Blackwell Guide to Ethics hasn’t helped me understand it any better though.
I don’t think I can agree with Robert that we don’t naturally have ethics or morals. Surely in assessing an ethical theory one of the desirable features is intuitiveness? And for an ethics to have intuitive appeal some morals are innate?
I apologise if this post seems a bit too philosophy 101 but I am working my way into the subject matter as best I can.
Cheers for all your inspiration so far.
#1 · Chris
21 March 2010
“is there something monstrous, something inhuman in the kinds of demands that the ethicists put upon us?”
Isn’t it the ethical theory or moral code you (try to) live by that determines how much struggle is involved?
From the little so far I have covered of Kant’s Ethical Theory I would say that following Kant your life would be pretty dissatisfying framed by all the duties to yourself and others, particularly if there is no limit to the amount of self-improvement required by this theory.
At the other extreme if one were a moral nihilist you wouldn’t feel the weight of all the ethical demands that others are carrying around with them. However I will admit I am not sure how nice a society would be composed of moral nihilists! Would anyone be willing to hazard a guess as to how quickly this segment of society is growing?